Philips key007 wearable digital camera

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By Calvin Siew
Sep 15, 2003

If you have an inclination for James Bond devices, this Philips wearable digital camera will appeal to you. The manufacturer's naming convention even contains the 007 digits closely associated with the famous celluloid spy. However, unlike espionage flicks where images are shot instantly or zoomed in clearly for well over 100x, you should be laughing if this gizmo gives you a recognizable face more than 5m away.

Zippo-Sized Fun
The key007 arrives in a size typical of most current flash memory drives. At 86 x 28 x 18mm and hitting the scales at just 30g, this digicam resembles Philips' other Key Rings, such as the MP3-playing Key003 reviewed earlier. For ease of use, there are only two moving parts on this suave device: The shutter and a lens protector that also doubles as a switch.

Some people will find the simple operation emancipating, while others will wish for more features. Put simply, the elegant design lacks an LCD. No, not the ones for displaying captured images--that'll be too much to ask for. But one to show how many more shots you can take, or even a gauge for the available space of the flash storage would be helpful. Still, the key007 makes do with a memory indicator that blinks when you have less than 3MB left. With the picture files taking between 50KB and 120KB, you'll still be able to take about 25 shots on "memory low" before you need to visit your PC or notebook.

Software Interface
The key007 comes with a small CD that contains Adobe Acrobat Reader, Photo Manager, and the user manuals in PDF format. The Photo Manager program detects and manages your photos into albums each time you connect the device. In it, you'll find some image-enhancing and editing options, interpolating software, and a rather useful whiteboard processor utility that works fairly well at cleaning up pictures of text documents.

For those who can do without the basic software package, the key007 will function fine without them. Plug it into your system's USB port and the device is picked up by Windows as a removable drive. Although useful, the 64MB size limited this flexibility somewhat. However, being unable to copy large files on the go is not without reason. The unit is as slow as molasses in terms of transfer speed. It took us just over 5 minutes to write 40MB of data onto the key007 and just under 4.5 minutes to read from it. Even though this was tested on a USB 2.0-equipped machine, this Philips supports the older USB 1.1 transfer only.

Usage And Performance
The key007 powers up in a rather quick time of 2.5 seconds, with the first shot taken in about 3 to 4 seconds. The shot-to-shot interval also clocked in at a respectable 2 to 3 seconds. One caveat: You'll have to leave the unit switched on for about 2 seconds after each capture for the camera to write to the onboard flash memory.

Although the box would have you believe you've got a 1.3-megapixel camera, the device has only a 300k-pixel sensor. Therefore we weren't expecting much. However, we were still disappointed with its performance. The dynamic range was much more compressed than even some camera-phones, leading to clippings in the highlights and loss of details in the shadows. The photos captured also lacked any sharpness with the images looking pixelated and jagged (see illustration).

Due to the small size, it's hard to keep the unit still. And sans flash, this is one camera that needs a reasonably bright surrounding for usable photos. Similarly, because of the form factor, with one-hand operation it's easy to slide an errant finger over the lens when you're shooting.

Our Take
With 64MB flash memory drives going for about S$50 (US$28.50) these days, the key007's S$199 (US$114) sticker price makes it a little hard to swallow. However, the added functionality--or rather fun--of the built-in camera will prove a boon for some. Also, for a mere S$50 more you can purchase the key008 which is virtually the same as the 007, but with 128MB of flash memory. Still, with a small, blurry optical viewfinder to contend with, flash drives with integrated cameras have a long way to catch up with Bond's whizbang gizmos.